Mapledurwell
is the first parish history to be published by the New Victoria History
of Hampshire group. Since publication of the first Victoria County History account of the
parish in 1911, ideas
about what constitutes a good parish history have been transformed.

This
new history includes much more about the village itself and about its
economy and society, highlighting the lives of ordinary people as well
as tracing those who owned the parish’s
land and property. It discusses Quakers and Congregationalists as well
as the congregation of the established church, and looks minutely at the
history of elementary education, revealing the appalling sanitary
conditions suffered by pupils at the local school.
Despite its proximity to the urban centre of Basingstoke, Mapledurwell
is typical of many Hampshire downland parishes in which the present-day
landscape reflects an earlier open-field system. Its village, recorded
in Domesday Book, is rural and picturesque
with many attractive timber-framed cottages, the oldest of which is
15th century. Much of it was owned for a long period by Corpus Christi
College, Oxford, and Winchester College also had properties in the
parish.

This
book explores, through a close reading of the archival records, how
Mapledurwell developed from an agricultural community, which also
produced textiles and later malt, into a
modern commuter village with only one working farm, and establishes a
model for the histories of other rural parishes in Hampshire.